Real World Multiplication and Division
3rd Grade
3.N.2.7
Real World Math Problems can be solved by following 6 easy steps
Have pencil and paper ready so that you can write down the 6 steps.
Understand The Problem
Do you understand what the problem is asking?
2. Picture the problem.
Can you draw or make a model of the problem?
Solve The Problem
3. Think about what you are being asked.
Is your answer going to be large or small?
4. Decide what operation to use.
Will you need to add, subtract, multiply, or divide?
Review Your Answer
5. Reread the problem and your answer.
Does your answer make sense with the problem?
6. Check your work.
Did you add, subtract, multiply, or divide correctly?
Helpful Information
Many of the problems you will see will have an unknown value.
Unknown values are often represented using a letter of the alphabet such as n for number. A question mark can also represent an unknown number.
Inverse Opperations
Each multiplication problem has an inverse or opposite division problem. Each division problem has an inverse or opposite multiplication problem.
Can you name some examples?
Let’s try solving a problem together using the 6 steps.
There are 36 slices of pizza at Martha’s birthday party. She wants to share them equally with 6 friends.
Which equation can be solved to determine how many slices of pizza each friend will get?
Do you understand what the problem is asking?
There are 36 slices of pizza at Martha’s birthday party.
She wants to share them equally with 6 friends.
Which equation can be solved to determine how many slices of pizza each friend will get?
2. Picture the problem.
Can you draw or make a model of the problem?
This can be a image in your head or on paper. 36 slices of pizza shared equally with 6 friends.
3. Think about what you are being asked.
Is your answer going to be large or small?
Our problem is asking us to share (or divide) all the pizza between the 6 children. Each child will receive a portion of the total amount of pizza.
4. Decide what operation to use.
Will you need to add, subtract, multiply, or divide?
Since we are sharing 36 slices of pizza with 6 people, we will need to divide the number of pizza slices into 6 equal groups.
5. Reread the problem and your answer.
Does your answer make sense with the problem?
There are 36 slices of pizza at Martha’s birthday party. She wants to share them equally with 6 friends.
Which equation can be solved to determine how many slices of pizza each friend will get?
Right away, we can determine that we need to rethink our answer and make sure that it fits the question and makes sense with the answers we have to choose from. B is a division equation but the numbers don’t make sense with the situation. ?(something) divided by 36 = 6 would require that the question mark be a much bigger number than 36. The ? in B represents 216. 216 divided by 36 equals 6. This does not fit with the problem.
5. Reread the problem and your answer.
Does your answer make sense with the problem?
There are 36 slices of pizza at Martha’s birthday party. She wants to share them equally with 6 friends.
Which equation can be solved to determine how many slices of pizza each friend will get?
The addition and subtraction problem does not fit this situation since we are not adding or subtracting anything in this problem.
Let us consider D. 6 times something equals 36. We do have a total of 36 slices of pizza. There are 6 friends. Each friend gets 6 slices. If we insert 6 for the ? we will have 6 x 6 = 36 which is true and fits this situation.
6. Check your work.
Did you add, subtract, multiply, or divide correctly?
When solving this problem, we determined that we needed to divide 36 pieces of pizza between 6 people. Each division problem has a multiplicative inverse or opposite.
We were able to use the relationship between multiplication and division to know that the multiplication problem
can be used to show the opposite or inverse of the division problem used to divide the pizza.
Try a few on your own.